Friday, June 26, 2015

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CRAZY APOCALYPTICS GET THEIR APOCALYPSE?

I know I should just relax and savor the Supreme Court ruling making same-sex marriage legal nationwide. But it's been a devastating week for angry American reactionaries who think civilization as we know it is going to hell in a handbasket -- yesterday's Obamacare ruling, the sudden rethinking of Confederate symbols, and, let's not forget, gruesome terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia, and Kuwait. If you're an American right-winger, all of this is connected. It's a sign that we've mocked God and fallen out of his favor. It's a sign that satanic forces are winning.

I wouldn't give a crap what these people think except for the fact that they vote, they dominate many American states, and they own guns.

Their control over the political system at the state and local levels means, at the very least, that we're not just going to transition seamlessly into an America where gay couples can marry anywhere. Granted, maybe there'll only be a few pockets of resistence like this, in Alabama:

Pike County out of marriage business for good after Supreme Court ruling

Pike County officials haven't issued marriage licenses in months, and today Probate Judge Wes Allen announced that his office is now permanently out of the marriage business.

"My office discontinued issuing marriage licenses in February and I have no plans to put Pike County back into the marriage business," Allen wrote in a statement. "The policy of my office regarding marriage is no different today than it was yesterday."

Couples -- both gay and straight -- who want to get married in Colbert, Washington and Henry Counties will have to wait a little while.

The probate offices closed this morning to review the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage in Alabama and across the nation. Colbert County Probate Judge Daniel Rosser would not say when the office would reopen, or whether it would ultimately issue licenses to same-sex couples....

Probate Judge Ryan Robertson of Cleburne County said he will stop performing marriages in his courthouse. He has not made any firm decision on whether he will issue marriage licenses.

Religious right leaders want resistance at the state level:

RT @BryanJFischer Great need of the hour: governors who will defy the Supreme Court, refuse to issue sodomy-based licenses in their states.

UPDATE: "But on Friday, Paxton said in the headline of his statement that the state would be 'following high court’s flawed ruling.'")

When I think of the roadblocks to legal abortion devised by the right since Roe v. Wade, what astonishes me is the sheer creativity. Say what you will about conservatives, they have a genius for concocting ways around laws they don't like. I can't believe they won't find ways around this one.

And as Greg Sargent says, they're going to keep fighting Obamacare, too. They're going to keep resisting the Medicaid expansion and they're going to keep putting out propaganda designed to portray the law as a disaster. And yes, they will repeal it if they win the presidential election in 2016.

I'm glad that election is more than a year away -- I don't care how many times you say that the GOP field is a "clown car," the domestic events of the past week have the potential to be massively inspiring to GOP voters, while conveying the impression to everyone else that liberalism is triumphant (which, to centrist voters, suggests that a return swing of the pendulum might be a good thing).

There's a lot of chuckling over Antonin Scalia's dissent in the same-sex marriage case, but I'm struck by this passage, in which he offers his party a talking point for the 2016 presidential election, on the subject of the makeup of the federal bench, and the Supreme Court in particular:

... the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

A month ago, this argument would have rung hollow. Now I fear a lot of heartlanders might think it makes a lot of sense.

Right-wingers are really, really mad right now, in both senses of the word. I get nervous when they're this mad.

This is America. It will take an act of egregious & fatal violence against a wedding party before the haters & homophobes realize they are on the wrong side & should maybe shut up. Isn't that what it takes every time?

"I know I should be happy, but..." is pretty much this blog's motto, isn't it? Every time the positions you claim to support get a victory, you're right there swearing that it's gonna backfire. You're every bit as apocalypse-minded as the right-wingers you claim to be against, and it seems like you've got more faith in their ultimate strength than they do. They're willing to admit defeat - but you're not! Nope, their resistance will only grow stronger! Take the win, dude.

But, I'm going to take this weekend, relax with a few drinks, and enjoy the "Pop-pop-popping" of our crazed sociopathic "Christian" conservatives heads, and give them some ointment made out of rock-salt for their butt-hurt.

On Monday, I'll start to worry.The backlash to these last two decisions, will be fast and furious - and, sadly, violent.I hope not.

Been there, done that, for much longer than the phrase "been there done that," which isn't exactly new. This is old, old, Impeach Earl Warren kind of stuff. It's not persuading anyone who wasn't already persuaded.